


flirting with death

by Aiwainaah



Series: even death can't do us part [1]
Category: BLACKPINK (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Grim Reapers, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Lot of kissing, Past Lives, Reincarnation, i tried to keep the violent parts short but yeah they're there, i was really vague with the historical parts but still. i apologise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:17:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20665631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aiwainaah/pseuds/Aiwainaah
Summary: When Lisa bumps into a girl dressed like she just came out ofThe Matrix, she doesn't expect that girl to be a grim reaper. She also never expected a grim reaper to be so beautiful and dorky and amazing, and she definitely never expected to know them.(In which Lisa is a #stressed college student and Jisoo is a diligent grim reaper who dresses in cute pink sweaters when she's off work and maybe they both seem a little familiar to each other...)





	flirting with death

**Author's Note:**

> i strongly advice to read the tags! i'd say it's not that bad but i tend to underestimate myself on these things so like, yeah, there's a small part with graphical violence and death so heed yourselves please
> 
> also i wanna apologise beforehand for the "historical" parts. i did not do _any_ research, which is _bad_, but i was way too busy for it and i decided to keep it really really vague instead. i hope nobody is hurt or offended by that

****Lisa knows something is wrong as soon as she set foot outside the little cafe on the very edge of campus. Frappuccino in hand and backpack hanging off her shoulder, she freezes right in the doorframe, not caring about the angry grumble coming from the customer who meant to exit after her.

“Something’s off…” she mumbles.

Then she hears the sirens. The sound is distant, the ambulance probably still far away, but Lisa has a feeling that it’s on its way to this side of campus.

With a shaky breath, she pushes her backpack further up her shoulder and slides out of the doorway (this time ignoring the sarcastic _“Thank you!”_ from the man behind her). She rounds the corner of the block where the little cafe is hidden, ready to walk to her dreaded calculus class, and nearly walks into a girl standing right behind the corner. Lisa only narrowly manages to brake before she bumps into the stranger.

“Oh, whoops!” Lisa says, taking a step back and smiling sheepishly. “I didn’t see you ther-“

Her words get caught in her mouth as soon as her eyes meet those of the shorter girl in front of her. She can feel the hairs at the back of her neck standing up and her knees turning to pudding. A voice inside her head is telling her to turn around and _run_.

The girl in front of her is dressed entirely in black — black suit, black coat, black hat, black shoes. Her brown eyes are wide as she stares back at Lisa in apparent confusion.

There’s a beat of silence between them as Lisa feels something absolutely _primal_ inside her core yelling at her to _get the fuck out of here_.

“How can you see me?” the girl asks before Lisa can succumb to her flight instinct (that same voice urging her to run is also telling her that fighting will do her no good). The girl’s voice is deep and smooth and it sinks into Lisa’s ears like a warm poison — velvety and smooth and triggering every single alarm bell inside her head.

“U- uhm, uh,” Lisa stutters as she pushes down that feeling of _wrong_ inside her chest. She tries her best to keep from staring slack-jawed at the strange girl. “I- it’s basic optics, you see? Light hits your body and then whatever is reflected reaches my eyes and gets turned into electric signals that-“

“Shut up, I know how vision works,” the girl snaps a little aggressively. “That doesn’t change the fact that you _shouldn’t_ be able to see me. Are you dead? Actually, don’t answer that. Come with me.”

And without waiting for poor, confused Lisa to try and make sense of _any_ of what she just said, the girl grabs her long hoodie sleeve and starts pulling her past the entrance to the apartment building they’re standing in front of and into a dark and narrow alleyway.

“Oh, _no no no_, I am _not_ going in there, no thanks!” Lisa says as soon as she notices the shady-looking street that the girl is pulling her towards. “I’ve seen _enough_ horror movies to know how this ends, _no thank you_.”

The girl sighs, let’s go of Lisa’s sleeve and turns around to look at her with an irritated expression on her young face.

“_Fine._ Do you,” she says. “Just know that you’ll look like a crazy person talking to thin air.”

Lisa is about to protest when she notices two people staring at her as they pass by. She shuts her mouth and turns her head to look at the translucent reflection in the blinded window next to them.

Just her. No girl dressed like she just stepped out of _The Matrix_.

As quickly as she possibly can, Lisa takes her phone out of her back pocket and pretends she’s answering a call as she holds it up to her ear.

“Hello, who is this?”

She shoots the girl a discreet look before turning away again as if listening to her fake phone call. She doesn’t understand what’s going on, but she’s dying to know what this stranger has to say and she’s not about to make a fool of herself this close to campus, where anybody she knows might see her.

“Can’t you just talk to me normally?” the girl asks. Lisa can’t see her face the way she’s turned away, but she can imagine the annoyed look that’s probably settled down on her features. “There’s not gonna be any murderers jumping out to kill you in that alley.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, I hear you,” Lisa says into her phone, very pointedly looking anywhere but at the girl to her left. “But consider this: I don’t want to. Deal with it.”

There’s about two beats of utter silence as the strange girl composes herself (or so Lisa guesses). Then, in a tone that sounds only slightly forced, she says, “Fine. I’ll play along. But I only have 147 seconds to talk.”

“Then be quick,” Lisa deadpans, and this time she actually looks at the girl.

She’s pretty, Lisa has to admit. Long, ebony hair, big brown eyes and very pink, very plump lips. Even under the heavy coat that is only slightly too thick for the early spring weather, the girl looks like she could be a model.

Everything about her looks _more_ than right, and yet… Lisa can’t shake off that odd feeling of wrongness. There’s just something about her aura that makes Lisa’s stomach twist around painfully inside her.

“The gist of it is this,” the girl begins, “unless you’re dead or some kind of immortal being — which, no offence, you don’t seem to be — you should _not_ be able to see me right now. This is not something that basic optics can cover. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.”

The girl reaches up to touch the rim of her fedora, looking around almost nervously.

“So what are you saying?” Lisa asks, feeling her heart beat all the way up into her throat. Logically, she knows that what this stranger is saying doesn’t actually make any sense. But on some instinctual level, she can’t help but believe everything that comes out of her mouth.

The girl seems to think for a moment. She pulls a small postcard out of an inside pocket of her coat, checks the time on her wrist-watch. She gives Lisa a once over and scrunches up her nose as if that’s not what she’s looking for.

“I’m thinking you either have ties to the supernatural world,” the girl says, “or you’re about to die.”

“I’m about to _what_?!” Lisa asks, her voice jumping up a notch as she looks at the girl with panic in her eyes.

The girl looks back at her, eyes widened just as much as Lisa’s as she appears to realise her mistake.

“Right, sorry,” she says, trying to save the situation. “I forgot that I can’t tell people they’re about to die. But either way, that’s probably not the case. You’re not on my list.”

If Lisa were a character in an anime, there would probably be a huge, red question mark appearing above her head right about now.

_A list?_ she thinks, but she doesn’t feel like asking about it out-loud. The girl seems to be in a hurry and either way, Lisa doesn’t think she’ll like the answer.

She watches the girl pause again and look around nervously. Despite her apparent invisibility to most people, she seems a little paranoid about people eavesdropping on their conversation.

“Listen, I don’t think this is the best place or time to have this conversation,” the girl finally says. The way she looks at Lisa is… _weird_. It’s as if she’s searching for something but doesn’t know what exactly it may be. Just that it isn’t there. “You seem entirely human, which doesn’t explain why you can see me. Your connection to the supernatural has to be something very hidden and discreet, but I simply don’t have the time to find it right now. What about we meet again some other time and talk?”

Lisa doesn’t think there is any way she _isn’t_ dreaming all of this up, but it all feels a little too real to be only inside her head. The frappuccino in her right hand feels a tad too cold and the books in her bag feel far too heavy and — she notices now — the sound of that siren has gotten much nearer and feels too present to be made up.

No, this is real alright. But then what is this girl talking about with her supernatural world and the lot?

“I- I don’t think I understand-“ Lisa starts, but she cuts herself off halfway. Something tells her she won’t get a straight answer anyway, so she might as well quit trying. She moves the hand with her phone slightly to attract the girl’s attention to it. “Alright, whatever. Do you know your phone number by heart?”

Amazingly, the girl blushes at that, a soft pink spreading out from the tall bridge of her nose to the tips of her heavily pierced ears.

“I don’t have a phone, actually,” she mutters a little awkwardly, “but what about we meet tonight at the park near here? That’s quiet enough to have a proper talk.”

Lisa does some mental gymnastics to run through her schedule quickly. Yeah, she’ll probably have tons of homework to do and there’s still that essay she needs to finish for her literature elective until Monday, but all of those can wait.

Now that the feeling of _wrongness_ is starting to subside, her curiosity has started taking over.

“The one next to the faculty of biology, you mean?” Lisa asks. “Yeah, that’s okay. Meet me at seven by the butterfly hall.”

The girl nods rapidly and Lisa notices that she seems less tough now and a lot more hectic than before. When she checks the time on her watch again and her eyes go wide like saucers, Lisa is oddly reminded of the rabbit from _Alice In Wonderland_, the one who is always hurrying around and crying about being late.

“I’ll see you there then. Stay away from the Five Ladies night club.”

And with that, the girl is off, jogging across the pedestrian area and _towards_ said night club, leaving Lisa behind with a weird feeling in her gut.

When Lisa sits down next to Chaeyoung in the second last row of their shared calculus class, the first thing her friend does is wave a news report she’s opened on her phone in front of Lisa’s face and say, “There’s been a carbon-monoxide leakage in Five Ladies.”

* * *

There’s an old saying — about mistakes of the past and about how spring will always return, no matter what. Jisoo wishes she could remember it. She doesn’t know when or where she heard it. All she knows is that it’s meaningful to her.

Now the words are muggy, jumbled up, different every time she tries to think of them. It must have been a long time since she last heard someone say the short phrase, perhaps lifetimes ago. It’s like a distant light in a foggy forest, shining through just enough for her to know that it’s there, too obscured to really make out.

_‘Focus, Jisoo,’_ she scolds herself mentally, turning her attention back to the tea cup she’s washing. Or rather, which she started washing about ten minutes ago and eventually ended up holding still under the cold, running water as she zoned out.

She finishes washing the cup and shoots a look down at her wristwatch.

Quarter past six. She could probably have been done much sooner considering that today hadn’t been particularly busy, but she had taken her time with the last soul, hoping it would distract her from the morning’s encounter.

It was certainly pretty strange. Of course, Jisoo had heard before of humans who could see grim reapers like herself. Hell, there had even been that one little boy who had called after her as she’d led his deceased grandfather out of the hospital room. It had thrown Jisoo off entirely and she had actually turned around to spare the little boy a smile and tell him that his grandfather would be fine. The little boy had hiccuped, tears in his eyes, but then he’d given her a solemn and understanding nod and that was the end of it.

This felt different.

“Who is she…” Jisoo found herself musing quietly as she placed the small tea cup back on its shelf. She couldn’t help but wonder why the girl’s face looked so painfully familiar without Jisoo ever having seen her before.

_“As a grim reaper,”_ Junmyeon, the chief grim reaper in Jisoo’s district, had told her once, very soon after her rebirth as a reaper, _“the memories of all your past lives have been erased entirely. Everything should be gone, so that you may fulfil your new duties without reservations. However, no process is perfect and some memories are so deeply rooted that nothing can possibly destroy them.”_ He had smiled sympathetically at that, even a little sadly perhaps. _“You won’t remember any places or faces. But if the circumstances are right — and fate sometimes wills them to be —, you may find yourself remembering abandoned emotions from a lifetime ago.”_

It wasn’t until decades later that Jisoo found out about how Junmyeon had, a long, long time ago, found the reincarnation of his former lover while having to reap their soul.

Jisoo shakes her head to get rid of the thought. It always sends shivers down her spine when she thinks about it. She can’t fathom a way to deal with the pain of touching a dying person’s hand only to see herself in their memories. Fate has all kinds of twisted ways to punish a person for their sins, even in the afterlife. It’s better not to dwell on it.

With a grunt and a determined nod, Jisoo pushes herself off the counter and walks over to the door, grabbing her coat and her hat before exiting the tea room.

It’s not too warm outside, but the early spring weather doesn’t really warrant wearing such a thick coat. Jisoo glances at her watch, wondering if she has the time to go home and change before meeting with the girl from this morning, but she quickly decides against it. She wants to be at the park early to make sure she doesn’t miss the girl when she arrives. There’s just something about her that tingles at the back of Jisoo’s mind and Jisoo may already be damned in this afterlife but may she be damned in the next one as well if she doesn’t figure out what the hell is up with this girl.

“Jisoo!” someone shouts as soon as the grim reaper sets foot in the park.

Jisoo turns to look at the speaker — a beautiful fairy, around Jisoo’s height and with an young face that practically glows in the dim, red light of dawn. The fairy is dressed in a thin dress woven together with all kinds of spring flowers in full bloom. It’s a stark contrast to the rather lifeless and barren park around them.

“Hey, Jennie,” Jisoo greets, feeling a soft smile slip onto her lips. “How’s spring going?”

“Oh, I think I can have the plums bloom next week already,” Jennie replies, clearly happy to tell someone about her progress. Jennie is the one in charge of the change of seasons in this part of town and she takes her job _very_ seriously. “Beware, I’m gonna make you pick a bouquet with me again, this year.”

Jisoo grins at that. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

The two of them pick a small bouquet of the first bloomers every year. And in the case of two immortal beings, that’s a _lot_ of years.

“So what brings you around, tonight?” Jennie asks, probably spotting the careful way Jisoo is scanning the path leading to the east side of the park. “I get the feeling you didn’t pass by just to admire the last touches of winter in the park with me. What’s bothering you?”

Jisoo sighs. This is the problem with having the same overly perceptive fairy as your best friend for over a century and a half — Jennie’s learned to read Jisoo far too well for the latter’s liking.

“I’m actually supposed to meet here with a human in fifteen minutes,” Jisoo explains, absently pulling at the hems of her sleeves and digging her short fingernails into the tough coat material. “Or, at least, I _think_ she’s human. She was able to see me this morning while I was wearing my hat. I couldn’t sense anything supernatural about her, but it felt… _weird_, I guess.”

Weird is an understatement. Jisoo hasn’t really been able to think about anything other than that encounter all day. It feels like she’s missing some major piece of a puzzle she’s seen before and then forgot about.

Jennie gives her a strange look, head cocked slightly to the side, thumb and index finger playing with a daisy on her dress.

“What?” Jisoo prompts and it comes out sounding much more irritated than she actually intended.

“I’m just thinking,” Jennie says, unfazed by Jisoo’s snap. “I don’t remember you ever saying that about someone before. Or ever meeting with a human outside of work.” She pauses, clearly thinking more thoughts than she voices. “I guess I’ll leave you to it, then. Tell me everything about it later and scream if you need anything.”

And with that, Jennie turns on her heel, takes one step into the opposite direction, and then promptly dissolves into thin air and a shower of glitter.

Jisoo lets out a sigh. Usually, she’ll spend a few hours walking around the park with her friend and talking about anything and everything until they finally go sit down at some small cafe closeby. The fact that Jennie would just turn tail and _poof_ out means she’s just left Jisoo to fend on her own.

_‘Pull yourself together, Jisoo,’_ the grim reaper scolds herself as she catches on to her train of nervous thoughts. _‘You’re 287 years old. You’re a big girl, you don’t need anyone to hold your hand. You got this.’_

She takes a deep breath, calms herself, then takes the large path down to the butterfly hall in the east side of the park.

The snow cover has molten by now. There are only a couple thin, white patches left behind where the shade of the barren trees keeps the ground protected from the sun’s warm rays. A couple of plants have finally started to sprout out of the ground, though they look small and fragile in the dim light of dawn.

It’s a spring like any other of the many springs Jisoo has seen, but for some reason it feels different this time. Warmer, friendlier.

She looks up at the small green buds sprouting from the branches of the plum trees that are to bloom next week and she wonders. Wonders if this strange warmth in her gut means something. Wonders if anything could mean something.

Her stomach churns and turns icy cold when she lowers her gaze back to eye level.

There she is, the girl from this morning, sitting on the bench right at the entrance to the butterfly hall and looking at something on her phone, pastel pink backpack held loosely in her lap. It seems Jisoo wasn't the only one with the bright idea of arriving at their meeting point more than ten minutes early.

The girl looks up from the screen in front of her when she hears footsteps approaching. She lowers her phone against her bag and her big, brown eyes rise slowly to meet Jisoo’s. Their gazes meet head-on, and — perhaps for the first time that day — both of them really _look_ at each other.

Not a moment later, Jisoo feels a searing pain cut through her chest, like a singeing hot knife right to the heart. It takes all of her energy not to scream and drop down to her knees, only a soft whimper escaping her mouth instead as she freezes on the spot.

She looks away quickly, hides her face in the long, ebony strands of her hair, hoping for the pain in her chest to subside.

It doesn’t.

"Hi," the girl on the bench eventually greets Jisoo, breaking the uncomfortable silence between them. She puts her phone away in an inside pocket of her jacket and pats the space next to her on the bench with one hand. "I see we're both kinda early.”

Slowly, painfully, Jisoo looks up at the empty spot on the bench, looks up at the girl's expectant gaze. She squirms uncomfortably inside her coat but forces herself to inhale a shaky breath and finally, _finally,_ tears herself out of her stupor.

"I guess we are," Jisoo agrees, at a loss for any better response as she stalks over to the bench and sits down almost mechanically.

Another minute passes. Jisoo stares ahead at a naked cherry blossom tree, the pain in her chest slowly ebbing down to a throbbing ache, just barely present enough for her not to be able to ignore it.

She feels the girl's gaze on her, scrutinising and unrelenting. Or maybe just curious and confused. Jisoo has a tendency to overthink and misinterpret people’s behaviour when she’s nervous, and if the thundering rhythm of her heartbeat against her ribcage is anything to go by, then she’s pretty fucking nervous right now.

“So,” the girl says, following Jisoo’s gaze and fixing her sight on the skeletal cherry blossom tree in front of them. “Tell me why basic optics shouldn’t apply to you.”

Jisoo lets out a soft sigh, sits up straight. Squares up to answer the question.

“I’m a grim reaper,” she says, truthfully. “I guide the souls of those who have passed away to the next station so that they may reach a proper afterlife. For obvious reasons, I have to be able to make myself invisible to humans — that’s why I was surprised that you could see me when nobody else could.”

Jisoo feels the girl’s eyes on her, but when she turns to return her gaze, the girl is looking up at the darkening sky. The sun has already disappeared behind the horizon and a handful of vague pinpricks of light just barely flicker through the canvas of nightfall. Jisoo looks up as well and lets out a soft sigh.

“I remember when you could still see the Milky Way so clearly in the night sky,” she finds herself mumbling, leaning back against the backrest of the bench. “But that was many decades ago.”

The girl next to her lowers her gaze a little and shrugs lightly, a soft smile on her pink lips.

“It’s alright,” the girl says, looking fondly at the illuminated skyline of the city stretching out in front of them. Her eyes seem to sparkle in the combined lights of the moon, the stars, and the neon lights of the city.

There’s a certain kind of beauty in how the many colourful lights penetrate through the setting darkness and paint the girl’s face a million different shades, and Jisoo…

Jisoo can’t make herself look away.

The girl turns to look at her and smiles, eyes pushed up cutely into crescents as she continues, “We might not be able to see all the stars anymore, but we have new lights to look at now. Whenever we lose something, we gain something in return.”

And for some reason, Jisoo finds herself relaxing when the girl says those words. She lets a tiny smile slip onto her lips and wonders quietly why all of this, from the calming words to her very own smile, feels so familiar all of a sudden.

“I’m Lisa, by the way,” the girl introduces herself with another smile. “Sorry for causing you trouble this morning. I thought you were playing some kind of prank on me at first, so I apologise if I didn’t seem particularly appropriate at all times.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jisoo says, waving her off with a measured smile. “Aside from giving me a bit of a shock, you didn’t cause me any real trouble. I’m sorry myself for scaring you, but I’m glad you agreed to meet me here now. Maybe we can figure out together why you can see me.”

And then, before she can forget, she hastily adds, “My name is Jisoo, by the way.”

Lisa laughs at the rushed introduction. It causes her nose to scrunch up cutely and for some reason, the sight of it pulls at Jisoo’s heart strings unfairly hard and makes her breath catch in her lungs.

_‘If she’s really going to be so cute all the time,’_ Jisoo thinks, feeling her lips form a smile that mirrors the bright one on Lisa’s face, _‘then this is going to be much harder than I thought.’_

Perhaps it’s a little silly that the first time in this lifetime that Jisoo feels like she has butterflies in her stomach is while she’s sitting on the small bench outside the building that holds the university’s big butterfly collection. But she can’t bring herself to think about it, not when the rising half-moon illuminates Lisa’s side profile like a soft, silver spotlight, not when Lisa’s laugh is slowly starting to sound like a lullaby to Jisoo’s ears.

And so, that night, for the first time in two hundred and eighty-seven years, Jisoo lets another person’s laugh cloud her usually alert senses, let’s another person’s eyes pierce through her usually cold facade, let’s another person’s smile cause her usually calm heart to thrum twice as hard inside her chest.

Maybe, just _maybe_… Jisoo allows herself to get comfortable around Lisa.

Against her better judgement, she let’s herself be fond of the new variable in her life. By the time the night swallows up the park entirely and Lisa announces that she has to go home and catch some sleep, the two of them have figured out exactly nothing about why Lisa can see Jisoo. But Lisa does end up happily proclaiming the grim reaper her “cryptic new friend” and that makes Jisoo smile much wider than it should.

The grim reaper goes to bed with a smile on her face that night.

* * *

“All these iterated triple integrals are making my left prefrontal cortex hurt like a bitch.”

Jisoo nods, pretending to understand what the hell Lisa is talking about as she sips her coffee quietly. The piece of Oreo cake between them is three bites from being finished, because despite the two of them having agreed to share it, Jisoo hasn’t touched it yet. She knows Lisa tends to stress-eat when she’s working on calculus homework and she can’t bring herself to take any of the cake away from the poor, overworked student.

It’s been about three weeks since the two of them met that fated morning and since then, they’ve made it a habit to meet up in the small café at the edge of campus every couple of days to talk over some coffee and random pastries. Lisa always brings her lecture notes with her, to scan through for about half an hour every time they meet; Jisoo always brings a small, red notebook, to keep track of the hints she catches of what may have caused Lisa to be able to see her.

Or so she says, at least.

Jisoo looks down at the first page in her little notebook. There are exactly three bullet-points inscribed at the top of the paper and that’s about where it ends. Underneath the scribbles, a drawing fills the page. The sketch is hasty, rough, but the picture is clear — Lisa, bent down over her lecture notes with a studious look on her face, wearing a cute beanie pulled sloppily over her ears and her messy hair.

That was on their first joint visit to the café. Lisa had announced that she needed to finish up a short assignment for her Introduction to Psychology class and that Jisoo could use the time to try and figure something out on her own.

“Who knows?” Lisa had said, offering the grim reaper a sheepish grin. “Maybe you’ll be able to look into my soul much better when I’m not continuously talking.”

“I’m not trying to _‘look into your soul’_!” Jisoo had wanted to scoff, but it came out sounding suspiciously much like a whine.

“Whatever you wanna call it then…” Lisa had laughed before turning her full attention to her assignment.

And, well, the twenty minutes she spent on her assignment may not actually have _been_ very long, but they definitely felt that way. Bored and unable to find any more clues concerning their little mystery, Jisoo found her fingers naturally angling the pen in her hand and moving to pull smooth lines across the creamy paper. She was already more than halfway done with Lisa’s face when she realised that _hey, people don’t usually draw whoever is sitting in front of them without telling that person!_

But Jisoo can’t stand leaving things unfinished and so she told herself she’d stop after that doodle was done.

_‘Yeah, sure.’_

The next four pages of the notebook are each filled with similar sketches, one for every time they’ve met after their evening by the butterfly hall. Without her consent, Jisoo’s hands open up the next free page and start moving of their own accord.

The paper rustles softly under her fingers. With a sigh, the grim reaper closes her eyes and lets the strokes flow out of the pen gently, Lisa’s image already etched so deep into the back of her eyelids so that she doesn’t need to look up anymore.

Perhaps Jisoo should be worried — they’ve only known each other for a few short weeks, after all, and it’s very unlike her to get so attached to someone, much less this quickly. She thinks of all the other grim reapers she works with as mere colleagues, acquaintances. Her only real friend is Jennie, and it took a whole century for the two of them to grow as close as they are today.

But the light scratch of her heavy, metal office pen on the smooth paper stops the grim reaper from falling prey to her negative thoughts. It’s been a while since she actually sat down and doodled for a bit, simply to fill her time. And if she’s being very honest, something about Lisa makes her never want to stop.

So she continues. She keeps her eyes closed all but for a few short glances down at the paper, forces herself to recall Lisa’s face without peeking a look.

Small nose, bright smile, cheeks flushed red from the cool spring air outside. She has a cute, blonde fringethat’s probably getting just a tad too long and is starting to hang down over her eyes. Jisoo remembers thinking last week, when Lisa was complaining about needing a haircut, that it’s a real pity that she can’t see Lisa’s eyes as well as she’d like to.

_‘She really does have pretty eyes…’_

But before Jisoo can pinch herself to come back to her senses, her mind conjures a very different image.

Upon the dark canvas of Jisoo’s eyelids, colours start swirling around, slow at first then dizzyingly fast, spiralling towards and around each other until they come to a sudden stop. In front of her, looking too real to be only Jisoo’s imagination going astray, is a very familiar yet somehow foreign face.

_Small nose… bright smile…_

The woman seems to be somewhere in her mid to late twenties, maybe. Her hair is pulled up in a very neat bun, held up with a golden hair clip that perfectly matches her regal clothing. She’s smiling, her eyes full of life, and her lips are moving around inaudible words. And even if there were any actual sound coming out of her mouth, Jisoo couldn’t possibly listen.

There’s panic burning at the back of her mind, some kind of ancient fear freezing her up entirely until she can feel her jaw ache from how hard her molars are pressing onto each other.

The woman leans forward, seems to whisper something conspirationally, and Jisoo thinks she can almost hear the words above the deafening sound of her blood rushing through her ears.

_“They can’t…”_ Jisoo can make out as the woman reaches out to cradle her cheek, her fingers leaving the ghost of a touch on her skin as the corners of her lips pull up into an awfully fond and gentle smile. _“…with…forever…”_

Jisoo feels her lips part as if to say something, but whatever it is gets lost in nothingness before it can reach her tongue. She feels her throat constrict painfully and there’s a sharp pang of pain in her chest, a feeling heavy as a rock and overflowing like a river in a sudden necking.

_Guilt_, she realises. That elephant stomping around inside her ribcage is _guilt_.

_“…you,”_ the woman says and this time her voice is louder, cutting clearly through the fog around Jisoo’s mind, and Jisoo realises only a moment too late that it’s because the girl is now leaning in close enough for their noses to almost be touching. _“And not even death could undo that, Ji-“_

“Jisoo!”

Jisoo shrieks and jumps nearly two feet out of her chair when she suddenly hears someone shouting her name. There’s a hand on her forearm, clutching tightly at the the thick material of her hoodie sleeve. The vision crumbles away instantly and it takes Jisoo a moment to realise that her eyes are wide open, have probably been open for a while.

“Jisoo, are you okay?” Lisa asks, worry evident in her voice. She raises a hand towards Jisoo’s face but stops herself mere inches away from it and moves to grab a handful of cheap paper towels from the container on the table instead.

She lets go of Jisoo’s hoodie sleeve and hands her the paper towels, speaking softly as she explains, “You zoned out real hard on me back there. I just looked up a second ago and saw you staring straight ahead and crying and I freaked out a bit.”

Still in a daze, Jisoo quietly accepts the paper towels. She touches her cheek with the tips of her fingers and pulls back to look down in surprise at the wetness on the pads of her fingers.

“I… I cried?” she whispers, more to her hand than to Lisa.

Lisa is silent for a moment. Then, sounding about as confused as Jisoo feels, she says, “So it seems.”

She looks up at Jisoo, fixes the grim reaper with a careful gaze and dares to let her lips pull up slightly at the corners, her expression practically spelling out an _‘It’s gonna be okay’_.

“Don’t worry, I know something that can help,” she says, grabbing her wallet and standing up from her chair. “There’s no problem that can’t be solved with a good muffin and a huge hot chocolate. I’ll be right back.”

And with that, she turns around and goes to line-up at the counter of the coffee shop, order in mind and Jisoo’s heart, or so it feels, in her hand.

* * *

Lisa will admit it: She is at least a little smitten for her friendly local grim reaper.

She’s a goner for the bright smile that takes over Jisoo’s plump, pink lips, the one that reaches all the way to her beautiful, dark eyes. She’s a sucker for the joy on Jisoo’s face when they walk past one of the blooming plum trees. She’s absolutely _weak_ for the way Jisoo likes to sit in the sunlight like she wants to drink it all up, like there is nothing better than sitting in the cool, early spring sun.

Lisa likes to listen to Jisoo talk, whether it be about the weather or about the long history of the butterfly hall by the faculty of biology. Jisoo always speaks so passionately, no matter what the topic, and Lisa invariably finds herself entranced by the sheer amount of _life_ brimming inside her friend, practically threatening to spill over.

“Sometimes, I forget you’re a grim reaper,” Lisa says once, accidentally speaking one of her thoughts out loud as they’re sitting outside the butterfly hall one frosty evening, each a cup of hot chocolate in their hands to keep them warm.

Jisoo cocks her head at that, gives Lisa a questioning look. Asks, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Lisa begins, stirring her plastic stick around the huge cup of hot chocolate in front of her, “you don’t really seem very different from any other person on the street. You’re not surrounded by dark fog, flowers don’t whither when you step near them — it’s kind of hard to wrap my head around the fact that you’re an undead being who’s already lived through everything and seen it all.”

She smiles a little awkwardly, unsure whether her words make any sense. To her surprise, Jisoo starts laughing, white clouds leaving her mouth as her lips pull into a big, bright smile that has been showing up more and more recently.

“I have hardly seen anything, Lisa,” Jisoo laughs, raising her cup to her lips to take sip of the hot liquid. “You don’t really get many off-days in this line of work and it’s rather uncommon for a grim reaper to travel very far from the place they’re assigned to.”

“But wouldn’t you want to?” Lisa finds herself asking, mouth moving faster than her mind. She’s already pulled a leg up onto the bench to face her friend and leans forward as much as is socially acceptable as she finds herself unable to look away from the grim reaper.

Jisoo’s round face, her plump lips, the sharp line of her jaw, the gentle curve of her nose — Lisa will admit that she is perhaps a little engrossed with the other’s features. Perhaps she does sometimes think about her pretty, supernatural friend when she’s lying awake in bed at night. Perhaps she does sometimes look at Jisoo’s dainty hands and wonder what it would be like to hold them in her own.

“I’d be lying if I claimed I don’t wanna travel the world,” Jisoo admits, her deep and velvety voice pulling Lisa out of her thoughts. “But if I really wanted to see everything there is to see, I don’t think even eternal life would suffice. Humans are complex and whenever you think you know everything there is to know, you come across a new surprise.”

Lisa hums in agreement, nods slowly before noticing how far she’s inched forward. She pushes herself just far enough back so that she won’t accidentally force herself into Jisoo’s personal space.

“So you don’t think we’re boring and repetitive dumbasses then?” Lisa asks between instances of blowing on her hot chocolate in attempt to cool the liquid. She’s burned her tongue in front of Jisoo a few more times than she’s willing to admit.

“Not at all,” comes the response. There’s a gentle smile on Jisoo’s lips and a faraway look in her eyes, like she’s reminiscing in some ancient memory. “There’s lots of evil in this world, immeasurable amounts of crime and wrongdoings — and yet, there are always so many good deeds that go hand in hand with all that chaos. It took me a while to start seeing it, but for every bad person in the world, there’s at least one good person, too. For every person who’s been wronged, there’s at least one person willing to help them out.”

There’s a quiet pause as Jisoo stops to smile wistfully at Lisa, stops just long enough for the look in her eyes to wash over Lisa and engulf her entirely in the rush of déjà-vu.

She’s heard all these words before. She’s heard _Jisoo_ say all these exact same words before.

Before she can stop herself, her lips are parting, tongue moving of its own accord as if possessed by some unknown ghost of the past in her subconscious.

“That’s what makes life beautiful,” Lisa and Jisoo say synchronously.

_‘That’s what makes it worth living,’_ is the part left unspoken that rings through Lisa’s mind as the two women stare at each other in quiet shock.

“That’s what makes it worth living…” Jisoo finally whispers Lisa’s thoughts.

Silence. It feels as though a heavy curtain just fell, but the stage behind it is still dark and empty. The actors, once spot on and present right on cue, seem to have forgotten their lines, their entrance, their very roles in this play. Now there is only an empty stage, filled only with the shadows of ancient stories, and Lisa and Jisoo are the only spectators seated in the moth-eaten chairs of the abandoned amphitheatre.

Lisa stares into Jisoo’s dark eyes for what feels like an eternity, trying and failing to remember the story that their lines belong to. Jisoo stares back just as ardently, a crease sat between her brows as she likely racks her brain for an explanation.

The stage is still empty. The actors are missing. The amphitheatre is dark save for one weak lightbulb flickering weakly right above their heads.

Jisoo puts her cup of hot chocolate down on the far side of the bench and reaches her hands out between them, palms up and inviting. The crease between her brows seems to deepen but her eyes are painted with resolve.

“Lisa…” she starts, voice even but heavy as she undoubtedly calculates her next action. “When I touch people, I can see their past lives. I don’t know who you were before this life, but I have a feeling that our paths may have crossed before we were reborn as who we are today.”

She pauses, her expression giving away how conflicted she feels about this. Her palms are still wide open, long fingers stretched out across the space between the two of them, warm and inviting in the cool air.

Lisa waits with bated breath for her to continue.

“We could have been mortal enemies, for all we know. Or we could have been friends or merely strangers who crossed paths a couple times.” Jisoo sighs and looks down at her hands. “If you want to know, you can take my hand and I can tell you what I see.”

Lisa looks down at Jisoo’s hands and frowns.

“I won’t see anything then, will I?” she asks.

“No, you won’t,” Jisoo answers.

“Then not,” Lisa says, shaking her head. As nice as holding Jisoo’s hands would probably be, this won’t cut it. “Isn’t there a way for both of us to see when and where and how we met in our past lives?”

At that, Jisoo’s face turns crimson. She’s stuttering futilely over a response and it’s so damn cute that Lisa has to physically bite down on her tongue to keep herself from giggling.

“Well, um, you see… I would, er, w- we would, uh…” Jisoo is flushed red as a tomato with shyness and embarrassment, which is an incredibly rare but also very, _very_ enjoyable sight, in Lisa’s opinion. “We would have to, erm… _kiss_. A grim reaper’s kiss can bring back memories from past lives.”

“Oh,” Lisa says, eyes wide and lips puckered around the sound. “Well, then…”

She turns around to place her cup behind her as Jisoo starts blabbering about how weird she finds that rule herself, and how the offer to just hold hands still stands and, and, and. Lisa turns to face her again and without waiting for Jisoo to finish her probably endless rant, she reaches out to cup Jisoo’s face with her hands and leans forward to press her lips against the grim reaper’s.

Lisa has just about a second to take in the heavenly feeling of the kiss — Jisoo’s lips soft and a little cold against her own, her cheeks burning up beneath Lisa’s palms, the sigh she lets out through her nose a warm tickle against Lisa’s skin as the both of them melt into the kiss far more easily than either could have predicted, a tension that’s been building up for weeks now dissipating from their muscles.

Then, the memories start rushing in.

_*_

_“Your Majesty.” The servant bowed deeply before the young queen, his long and colourful garments following his frantic movements. “There is a woman outside seeking your audience. She would not tell us her name but she has a bracelet with her which she believes will be enough proof of her importance.”_

_The queen hummed slowly and gestured for the servant to stand up._

_“Could I see the bracelet?” she asked._

_“Of course, Your Majesty.”_

_The man hurried towards the throne, kneeling before it swiftly so he could show off the thin bracelet in his hands. Threads of gold and silver were woven around a base of shiny copper, all crafted together to resemble thick vines of ivy crawling over a cracking pillar. The delicate piece was so carefully designed that the metal seemed nearly alive._

_The queen smiled, gently taking the bracelet from the servant and slipping it onto her wrist._

_“Have a room prepared for our guest, please, preferably one near mine. And tell her to meet me in the garden.”_

_*_

Lisa places a hand on Jisoo’s hip and draws her closer in, lips barely even pulling apart as they find a better angle and deepen the kiss. Jisoo’s own hands settle a little uncertainly around Lisa’s neck, fingers cold as they thread between the soft strands of hair and dance across the sensitive skin of Lisa’s nape.

Lisa lets out a happy sound and smiles into the kiss.

_*_

_“It’s been ages, Jisoo!” The queen tightened her hold on her old friend, tears threatening to spill across her cheeks as her heart swelled with happiness. “What brings you back?”_

_“So many expectations, so many problems, so many men courting me to win my parents’ favour…” Jisoo mumbled into the queen’s shoulder. “I couldn’t help but remember how much easier life was with you around, Lili. I realised that the time I spent here was the best time of my life and that I couldn’t keep wasting my life away living around people who only pretend to care about me.”_

_Lisa let out a content sound somewhere between a hum and sigh, her face pressed up against Jisoo’s neck to breathe in her sweet, intoxicating smell. She could practically feel the frustration and exhaustion bleeding out of her friend’s smaller frame as they held each other tight._

_“I missed you, Soo,” she muttered in Korean, glad she hadn’t forgotten the language after the foreign delegation had moved out of the palace, taking her best friend with it._

_“I missed you more,” Jisoo replied in Thai._

_They both giggled, embracing that sweet piece of their shared childhood. When they were younger, they would have different tasks and classes during the day, and they would always recite the same lines when they saw each other again at the end of the day._

_Now, it seemed more appropriate than ever._

_*_

Overwhelming joy fills Lisa’s heart at the reunion. The memories of the suffocating responsibilities of ruling a country also return, but her best friend’s presence had alleviated the stress of it back then and the soft push of Jisoo’s plush lips against her own has the same effect now as back then.

_*_

_“Don’t your parents miss you?” Lisa asked one night as the two of them lay outside in the grass, gazing up at the stars and relishing the silence that the world was drenched in during the dark hours._

_“My parents can always take a ship over here. There is nothing stopping them from visiting me,” Jisoo argued, voice calm despite it being a topic that both of them knew was sensitive. “Both my brother and my sister have visited over the year that I’ve been here and my parents are honestly not so important that the royal family would forbid them from taking a trip overseas for a month or two. They’re just stubborn.”_

_Lisa looked at Jisoo to her side. Her gaze was hard, full of judgement, but the moment Lisa reached out to place a hand on her shoulder, Jisoo’s expression softened._

_“I’m sorry,” Jisoo said, looking back at Lisa with a sad smile. “I had a fairly nasty fight with them. They wanted me to accept one of their strategic marriages and help them out in their grand plan to overthrow the royal family.”_

_Disgust was clearly audible in her words. All the scheming and sabotaging among the nobles and royals was something both of them despised — Jisoo probably even more so than Lisa, who was by all means in a far more dangerous position than her best friend._

_Lisa watched quietly as Jisoo stared up at the night sky, eyes rimmed red but tears reined in expertly._

_“When I decided to leave, they were obviously pretty mad.”_

_“I hope they come around soon,” Lisa whispered earnestly._

_“I hope so, too.”_

_*_

Forgotten is the cold spring air licking at their exposed skin, trying to sneak past the barriers of their jackets. Lisa’s body is warm all over as she moves to straddle Jisoo hips. The action causes Jisoo to break the kiss and look up at Lisa in confusion.

“What are you doing?” Jisoo asks. She seems fairly unaware of her hands slipping down to hold on to Lisa’s waist.

“What does it look like?” Lisa grins and presses a quick peck to Jisoo’s lips. “I’m trying to kiss you properly. If you’re okay with… _this_, of course.”

She gestures vaguely between the two of them. Lisa really went out on a limb with the first kiss, seeing as Jisoo wasn’t offering it just for the sake of kissing. But if the dazed look on Jisoo’s face is anything to go by, the grim reaper probably doesn’t really mind this kiss being for more than just the intended goal.

“Oh, I’m definitely okay with it,” Jisoo says, perhaps a little hastily. “Please, do continue.”

Lisa’s smile broadens. She gladly does as told.

_*_

_“Lisa!” Jisoo exclaimed in between giggles and desperately trying to get Lisa’s mouth of hers. “Lisa, stop, we need to talk!”_

_“Why?” asked Lisa, lips drawn into a huge smile as she bent down and peppered a couple more kisses across Jisoo’s face. “What is there to talk about?”_

_Jisoo pushed Lisa off decisively and sat up from the bed, giving Her Majesty one of her ‘I am actually being serious right now’ glares as she opened her mouth to speak._

_“Are we still friends after this?” Jisoo asked._

_Lisa blinked at her. Once, twice. Then she answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “Of course we are!”_

_“But friends don’t kiss like this and do things that only lovers do,” Jisoo insisted. “At this point, aren’t we lovers rather than friends?”_

_“Can’t we be both?” Lisa countered. “Can’t my best friend also be my lover? Isn’t that the perfect match?”_

_Jisoo seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding her agreement and giving Lisa a smile._

_“Alright, I can live with that.”_

_Lisa beamed and tackled Jisoo in a tight hug. Her breath tickled Jisoo’s ear as she sighed._

_“Thank god you’re okay with that because I don’t think I have it in me to stop myself from kissing you anymore.”_

_*_

They fall into a comfortable rhythm, like an ancient waltz that they’re both remembering together just now. They hold on to one another and comfortably change who leads their dance.

One step forward, one backward, a twist here and a bow there. The music floats slow and light in the air, bright with the sound of instruments only the two of them remember.

They melt into each other, an inseparable pair as they steal the breaths of the ghosts of people they once knew watching them twirl across the dance floor.

_*_

_“They’re gossiping about us in the palace,” Jisoo pointed out one evening as she lay on the bed and watched Lisa pull the various pieces of regal jewellery out of her hair. “I don’t think the royal court was expecting you to like women, much less marry one.”_

_“Let them,” Lisa said, nonchalant as ever as she placed a golden pin on her dresser. “They’re just jealous that I’m about to have the most beautiful, intelligent, and badass wife in the world. And I think some nobles were still holding out on the possibility to marry me and become king.”_

_“That last bit is fair,” Jisoo said, sitting up on the bed and making grabby hands at Lisa so her fiancé would come closer. “But I still maintain my position that _you_ are actually gonna be the most beautiful, intelligent, and badass wife in the world.”_

_“Hm, let’s call it a tie,” Lisa hummed. She was standing in front of Jisoo now, one hand on her fiancé’s neck, the other reaching out to gently cradle her cheek as she leaned forward to whisper in an almost conspirational tone, “Don’t worry about the gossipers. They can’t hurt us, I’ll make sure of it. Everything they say is just a load of bullshit — as long as I am with you and you are with me, we have every reason to stay together forever.”_

_Jisoo looked up into Lisa’s warm eyes, feeling her heart swell over with affection. She knew well enough how brutal the royal “gossip” actually got, how angry some nobles really were about the whole situation — she had even caught a glimpse of a pretty terrifying letter in Lisa’s personal office when she was looking for the latter, and who knew how many more letters there were. It made her feel terrible knowing that her relationship with Lisa was the reason behind all that criticism._

_“Soo, I can practically _hear_ you thinking,” Lisa interrupted her usual, destructive train of thought. “And I want you to know that you have absolutely no blame in the fact that assholes will be assholes. I want to marry you because I love you. And not even death could undo that, Jisoo.”_

_“I sure hope it doesn’t,” Jisoo replied, smiling now as she pulled Lisa down for a kiss. “I can’t imagine a life in which I don’t love you.”_

_*_

Lisa giggles when she accidentally pushes Jisoo’s cup off the bench with her knee. Jisoo breaks the kiss just long enough to glare at her and grumble, “You owe me another hot chocolate now.”

“I’ll buy you three if you want,” Lisa says, barely able to contain her laughter when she spots Jisoo’s cute pout.

“How generous of you, my queen,” Jisoo replies, voice dripping with sarcasm although she can’t quite conceal the fondness in her tone.

“Only the best for you, my love,” Lisa whispers against Jisoo’s lips.

_*_

_Lightning struck again, followed up immediately by deafening thunder and a stronger downpour of rain. The howling of the wind and rumbling of the storm masked the blood-curdling screams coming from the royal palace._

_Lisa swung her sword again and again and again, but no matter how often she landed a hit on one of those traitors, they kept on standing up while she was growing weaker by the second._

_So much blood… There was so much blood on the floor, on her clothes, in her hair. Some of it was hers, some was that of the three military generals attacking her. It disgusted her, the steely stench of blood and death. Violence and unnecessary fighting had always made her stomach churn._

_“Yield the throne!” yelled one man whom she recognised as one of the more ambitious but also lower-ranking generals. “This country cannot afford to be weak. Yield the throne!”_

_He managed to land a heavy kick to her chest, sending her flying backwards to hit the ground with a sickening thud. The silver rose pin that Jisoo had gifted her for her twenty-sixth birthday fell out of her hair and clattered against the ground. Black spots cluttered Lisa’s vision as the pain spread from the back of her skull._

_Curse this. Jisoo had always been the one who was better at combat; Lisa was better at diplomacy. The traitors had known exactly what they were doing when they’d decided to attack the day after Jisoo’s ship had set sail to her home country. The coup d’état couldn’t have waited until _after_ Jisoo had come back from visiting her parents for the first time in almost a decade._

_“Well, well,” came a greasy voice from above — Lisa couldn’t be bothered to discern who it belonged to. “Looks like Queen Lalisa Manoban, the wise and invincible, _can_ be defeated after all.”_

_The owner of the voice grabbed Lisa by the collar of her gown just as the spots covering up her vision finally receded. The nobleman, sweaty and bloodied from the fight, breathed the smell of his rotting teeth right into Lisa’s nostrils._

_“Any last words?” he asked, the cold blade of his sabre against her throat. Lisa’s own sword had fallen out of reach when she was thrown to the ground._

_“Yeah.” She spat in his face. “Fuck you.”_

_Lightning illuminated the blade of the small knife she pulled out of a hidden inside pocket of her royal gown. Before the man could react, she had already lodged it into his chest, right where his heart beat._

_The man sputtered and fell on her powerlessly. Lisa managed to push his blade away from her neck just in time for it to spare her arteries._

_One down. Maybe she still had a chance to ring the alarm._

_It took all of her energy to push the nobleman off herself, her limbs sore with the exertion and her head pounding deafeningly loud. She got to her feet slowly, careful not to inflict more damage to her head in the process. She grabbed her sabre from where it had clattered to the ground and faced the two remain traitors._

_The roar of thunder filled the palace._

_“Who else is in on this?” Lisa asked, undoing her royal gown with one hand as she eyed the two. Yes, this left her standing in only her thin underclothes, but it freed up her movements greatly and that was arguably more important at the moment than acting ladylike. “This is bigger than just the three of you, I can tell.”_

_One of the traitors — the highest ranking general of the whole lot, Lisa realised — sneered and replied, “Maybe it wouldn’t be if you actually went to war like we’ve been telling you. We can’t let you make our country look weak. You will die tonight for disrespecting our people this way.”_

_“Perhaps I will,” Lisa admitted, sliding the last of her royal clothes off and blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face. “But you will follow soon enough. And when you do, rest assured that the Heavens will not spare you for wanting to plunge your own country into unnecessary wars.”_

_The higher-ranking general looked livid, his face red with anger as he roared and lunged at the queen, missing entirely as she spun out of reach._

_Lisa’s head was still pounding and her muscles were sore, but she wasn’t done yet. She had one final task to complete and her sheer will to survive long enough to fulfil it activated something inside her, kept her on her feet, swinging her sword and circling the two men in what looked more like a graceful dance than a fight to the death._

_All she needed to do was get past the two to set off the alarm. She couldn’t possibly imagine how many were in on the scheme to overthrow her rule and what dirty story they’d find to explain her sudden death. She had to ring the alarm so that people could catch on to the fact that the royal palace was under attack._

_“Give up!” the lower-ranking general yelled, landing a hard hit to Lisa’s shoulder._

_She screamed out in pain, barely able to keep her knees from buckling._

_“You fucking wish!” she shouted, turning back and ramming her sword into the man’s intestines._

_*_

Both of them still, lips pressed against each other but unmoving.

Jisoo raises a hand to cup Lisa’s cheek which is as wet as her own face feels. Above them, unnoticed by the two of them, the cherry blossom tree whose branches hung bare above their bench when they sat down is now in full bloom.

Breathing in shakily, Lisa tries to focus on the warm feeling of being wrapped up in Jisoo’s arms instead of the ancient phantoms of pain wracking her body. She can almost hear Jisoo mouthing, _“It’s okay, you’re safe here. You’re safe now.”_

Lisa sighs and places one hand on the hand with which Jisoo is cupping her cheek.

She feels safe here and now. She feels safe with Jisoo.

_*_

_A strange sort of bliss spread from Lisa’s core, warm and calming in her bloodstream as it filled her entire body with peaceful numbness. The pounding in her head was so far away she could barely feel it anymore and the feeling of blood staining her body and clothes felt almost comforting._

_“We’ll meet again, my love,” she whispered faintly._

_Her unharmed hand clutched at her necklace, slowly tracing the ivy patterns that matched the ones on Jisoo’s bracelet. Next to her, the alarm fire blazed high into the sky, pushing out the darkness of the night. The rain had let up, only a gentle drizzle left to fall into the furious flames and onto the young queen’s battered body._

_“I know we will.”_

_Lisa’s eyes closed one last time. One last breath left her lips._

_Her heart stopped._

_*_

Their tears flow quietly into each other, staining their faces and their hands. They’ve stopped kissing at this point, the memories seared into their minds so clearly as if they were only days old, not from a lifetime centuries ago.

The cherry blossoms keep blooming above. Somewhere in the distance, a car honks, the sound disturbing the chatter of pedestrians walking the busy streets outside the park. Life in a time far away from the one they’re remembering presumes as they keep breathing each other in, foreheads leaning against each other and noses just a hair’s width away from touching.

Another lifetime passes between them in silence.

“I guess it’s been a while…” Lisa finally says, her voice barely above a whisper.

Jisoo pulls away gently, just enough to look at the girl in her arms properly. Her dark eyes look tired, rimmed red from crying and puffy around the edges. A couple pink cherry blossom petals have fallen on her face, stuck to the wet trails of tears that have rolled down her round cheeks.

“It has,” Jisoo admits, raising a hand to wipe a flower petal off Lisa’s cheek. “My queen… A couple hundred years and yet you still fail to let me catch my breath.”

Lisa lets out a laugh, choked up a little from the weight of ancient memories, yet bright enough to outshine the spring sun. It sounds like a melody, one Jisoo can finally remember, and it’s enough to forget the pain and loneliness of losing each other so, so many human lifetimes ago, even if just for a moment.

“I suppose you’ll have to go without breathing again, my love,” Lisa replies, lips laid in a smile so beautiful and full love that Jisoo finds herself unable to pull her long-lost lover and best friend into another passionate kiss.

And Lisa kisses her back with just as much fervour. They have to make up for lost time, after all.

* * *

“My love?” Lisa asks one night, curled up under her covers next to Jisoo. The bed is barely large enough to fit them both, but they’re huddled close enough to make do.

Jisoo hums in response, clearly sleepy though not enough so to stop running her fingers through Lisa’s hair. She dyed it again after spring ended, to a light pink reminiscent of the cherry blossoms they sat under on the park bench when they first kissed.

At least, when they first kissed in _this_ lifetime.

“I was wondering,” Lisa continues, one hand playing with the hem of Jisoo’s pyjama shirt, “what you did after I died? I only saw my own memories.”

She looks up at her girlfriend — her _wife_, if not even death could truly part them — and her round, brown eyes are sparkling with curiosity and full of love. Jisoo thinks to herself that if she started counting her blessings, she would find out what number infinity is.

“Our ship had been delayed because of the storm so we were only just leaving the port when we received word of the alarm at the palace.” Jisoo’s fingers still in Lisa’s hair. She thinks back to that terrible night, to the cold fear that had gripped her when the young messenger boy had run over to the ship, yelling that the palace was under attack. She remembers dropping everything and jumping off the ship, the rain hitting her face as she rode her horse as fast as it would go.

She remembers the pitying looks the palace staff had given her as she pushed her way through the crowd that had accumulated, making her way to the tower where the alarm fire was still burning high into the dark sky.

“I left immediately to get back to you,” Jisoo continues, her voice dangerously close to giving out, “but it was already too late.”

Burnt into her eyelids is the image of that horrid scene. When she blinks to force her tears away, all Jisoo can see is black hair splayed out like a halo across the floor around Lisa’s head and the ground painted red. All she can think of is the weak grasp those delicate and by then unnaturally pale and stiff hands had on the necklace matching Jisoo’s own bracelet.

She can’t quite recall much after that except the tears and the hushed whispers from Lisa’s aunt telling her to run away and watch her back. The memories of the weeks following are smudged and obscured by pain and grief, unclear and opaque save for a couple glimpses into bloodbaths of revenge and a final, desperate attempt to escape her own suffering.

It’s a morbid collection of memories.

“Did you…” Lisa mutters, reaching out carefully to take Jisoo’s hand out of her pink hair and intertwine their fingers. “Did you manage to heal? Eventually? Did you keep on living?”

Jisoo hesitates. Lisa sounds so hopeful, so wonderfully concerned and loving, wanting Jisoo to be happy even after such a horrible loss. But the answers to her question are nowhere near to happiness.

“Lisa, my queen.” Jisoo thinks about how she can put this as mildly as possible, but there’s really no way to sugarcoat her past self’s fate. “The only people who become grim reapers are the ones who commit suicide. And I can’t lie to you — my time before that was short and filled with gruesome acts.”

There are tears brimming in Lisa’s eyes now, threatening to spill over as her voice quivers.

“Jisoo… It’s okay…”

“No, it’s not,” Jisoo replies and she wonders when her own eyes started stinging and when her throat started constricting around her weak words. “I _knew_ revenge would bring me nothing — it wouldn’t bring me back and it wouldn’t ease my pain. But I couldn’t _bear_ the thought of those traitors seizing control and running your country, your _legacy_, into the ground.”

She isn’t crying. Her head hurts and she feels like there’s a mountain sitting on top of her chest, the weight of the guilt threatening to suffocate her, but she doesn’t cry. More than anything, she feels like she doesn’t deserve to cry and wallow in self-pity after what she’s done.

“To me,” she continues, voice steady despite the knot that has settled in her throat, “the country was the last thing I had left of you. You always loved your people more than any other leader and it _showed_. It showed in the way you respected your citizens and actually listened to them and wouldn’t let anyone talk you into going to war. It was the last piece of you I had left, I couldn’t just let them destroy what you had left behind and I’m not proud of what I did to protect-“

Her sentence is cut off when her voice finally gives out. The pressure behind her eyes is punishing and if Lisa wasn’t holding her hand, she’s certain it would be trembling furiously. When the younger — younger in their past lives and certainly much younger in this one — pulls her into an embrace, Jisoo all but melts into the touch, curling up against Lisa pitifully.

“Don’t cry, my love,” Lisa mumbles, her heart thrumming at a lulling pace against her ribcage, just below where Jisoo’s ear is positioned. “You did wrong, _very_ wrong, and I can’t condone that. But you know it and you regret it and… isn’t that what the afterlife is for? Aren’t you supposed to repent for your sins?”

Lisa gives Jisoo’s hand a squeeze, quick but comforting.

“And yet you’re here and not in some Hell or other,” Lisa reasons, voice as gentle as it can get, wrapping itself around Jisoo’s consciousness like a blanket. “I think this is your second chance. This is the sign that you should leave your mistakes in the past — not to forget, but to _grow_ — and take this second chance. Because no matter what, spring will come again and the world will learn to right itself. Things do get better, my love, even if you have to wait a couple seasons.”

Jisoo lets out a chuckle, soft and choked up but there nonetheless. It’s been a while since she’s heard Lisa say that, a couple hundred years at least, but it still carries the same value as it did back then and Jisoo would be lying to herself if she said it didn’t automatically make her feel better.

“Second chance… I like that,” she muses, burying her face into Lisa’s hoodie and smiling into the fabric so wide it hurts her cheeks. “But then it’s _our_ second chance. Because you’re here too and we managed to meet again and I don’t think that was completely accidental.”

Lisa let go of Jisoo’s hand so she could cup her face and guide her to look up.

“Even if it was, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to love you again,” Lisa declared, bending down to press a kiss light as a feather against Jisoo’s forehead. “And again.” A kiss on her cheek. “And again.” One on the tip of her nose. “And forever.”

Their lips met with a touch as soft and full of love as the both of them can manage, lingering just long enough to convey what words cannot.

“We should get married again,” Jisoo suggests when they pull apart.

“After I finish college,” Lisa reasons. “My parents would kill me if they found out I was marrying someone I just met when I should be focussing on my studies instead, and I don’t think they’ll buy into the whole reincarnation thing too easily.”

Jisoo pouts but she can’t argue with that logic. _She_ may have been reborn as a blank slate with no other purpose than leading souls to the afterlife, but Lisa has an actual family and friends and a life to upkeep.

So patience it is. It’s not like the time till Lisa graduates is particularly long compared to the 287 years she’s lives this new life.

“But when we do re-marry,” Lisa continues, grin wide, “and we _will_ — then I hope we actually get to grow old together this time.”

Jisoo can’t keep her mouth from shaping into an amused smirk. “You’re a bit sappy for a 20-year-old college student, don’t you think?”

“Hush, I’m 47 if you count my last life,” Lisa counters, trying to pull her face in an expression far more serious than she can possibly manage.

“Of course, of course!” Jisoo says with a laugh. “I apologise for the disrespect, my queen.”

Lisa laughs and they banter a bit more, cuddled up and cozy under the warm sheets as they continue talking, fast at first until the fire burns out and they simply smile at each other and hug. Jisoo is playing with a strand of Lisa’s pink hair again and Lisa is peppering kisses on Jisoo’s face again and they both can’t help but think that maybe this is the universe’s way of making up for all their pain and their short-lived moments of glory.

“I missed you, Soo,” Lisa mutters against her lover’s lips.

Jisoo smiles and catches Lisa’s mouth with her own for a quick kiss.

“I missed you more,” she replies, her Thai a little rusty from lack of use.

And really, aside from smartphones and the skyline, has so much changed?

* * *

(“Don’t you think it’s high time those two finally announce that they’re dating?” Chaeyoung asks, sipping on her frapuccino as she watches Lisa and Jisoo be grossly in love on the other side of the coffeeshop, her eyes full of judgement. “I mean I’m happy for them and all but come _on_. It’s been _weeks_ and they haven’t said a _thing_. We’re they’re best friends, Jennie! We should know even before _they_ do!”

The fairy sighs and shakes her head. She’s heard this speech far too often to care anymore.

“Like, _seriously_,” Chaeyoung continues whining, evidently unbothered by Jennie’s suffering. “I’ve comforted Lisa through all her college struggles and held her and fed her ice cream every single time some hot jock broke her heart. I _deserve_ to know.”

“And she _will_ tell you, and she’ll introduce you to Jisoo, but just give them some _time_.” Jennie pushes her slice of cake across the table, hoping against all odds that eating will make the cute little human complain less. “They literally only found out a few weeks ago that they not only _knew_ each other in a past life, but that they were _lovers_ and they were _married_ and that they both died apart under really tragic circumstances.”

Chaeyoung huffs, clearly unhappy about the answer she already knew. But she takes the cake offered to her and bites into it, apparently willing to sacrifice her whining in return for the solid piece of bliss.

And then she realises.

“Wait a second.” Her eyes are narrowed in suspicion and she’s pointing her plastic fork at Jennie, gesture accusatory in every way possible. “How do _you_ know about everything that went down in their past lives? You said Jisoo hadn’t told you anything.”

At that, Jennie smiles knowingly and seemingly pleased about the question.

“Little rosebud,” the fairy says, leaning across the table as her eyes suddenly start changing colour as quickly as a kaleidoscope. She’s close now and she smells of flowers and grass but also of the salty ocean and of the charged air before a heavy storm. “I don’t need her to tell me what I already know.”

And if her silky hair turns the colour of the night sky for a moment, stars glinting in it and comets flying over the pointed tips of her ears, then Chaeyoung is the only one who sees. If the planets dot Jennie’s face like moles and the rings of Saturn hang from her earlobes like earrings, then Chaeyoung is the only one who notices.

If the air around them vibrates with barely contained energy and _power_, then Chaeyoung is the only one who truly _feels_.)

**Author's Note:**

> god is a woman and her name is jennie kim. that's it, that's all i wanted to say.
> 
> damn i really managed to blow this idea out of proportion but do i regret it? nope, not at all. this was a pleasure to write and if you have anything to say about it all, please feel free to do so!
> 
> [CC](https://curiouscat.me/aiwainaah) || [twitter](https://twitter.com/aiwainaah)


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